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Walk with someone and photograph together. Then compare the results. You’ll see a different way of looking at the world. You’ll also have an opportunity to see how you see more clearly. Even when the images you make are the same you’ll learn that some results are driven by convention and this can prompt you to push further, to find something new, and to make your images more personal. The comparisons and contrasts you’ll see by photographing with someone else can be extremely insightful.

Paul Tornaquindici (top) and I (bottom) walked together more than once in Namibia. Standing a few feet apart, we made very different images.

A voice inside my head was grousing, “There’s nothing here. It’s not good enough. You’re not good enough. Someone else has done this before. You’ve done this before. You’re uncomfortable. You’ll have better luck next time.” I’d heard it all before. So I changed my inner dialog, “There’s something here; you just have to find it. You know how much you like the surprise when you do. You have a unique sensibility. You’ll bring something new to the situation. You can do it. It will be great. You’re enjoying this.” If I hadn’t shifted the tone of my self-talk I would have given up before I got started, instead, I stuck with it, for hours, and succeeded, many times. Refraction LX was just one of that morning’s successes.

You’ve heard it all before too. “You’re just like … you always … you never … you’ll never … why try …” As Carla Gordon said, “If someone in your life talked to you the way you talk to yourself, you would have left them long ago.” We’re told that to improve and reach our full potential that we have to be our own worst critics. It’s true that there is a time and a place for this – but it’s limited. Don’t make it a full-time occupation. If you do, you may never get where you need or want to go.

Professional athletes and performing artists have coaches and directors who not only train them but also encourage and inspire them as well. So do many CEOs and salesmen. So do many people from many walks of life at different times in their lives and stages in their careers. They may even engage different types of coaches at different times for different needs. When was the last time someone coached you? When was the last time you coached yourself? Even if you’re lucky enough to find the right creative coach who can help guide you to perfect practice, they can’t do all the work for you; you have to do the work too; after all, in the end, they’re training you to do it yourself. You can’t afford to wait and find your perfect creative coach. Instead, become that person.

Energize yourself. Affirm your abilities. Take note of your previous accomplishments. Set tangible goals for the future. Chart your progress along the way. Provide yourself incentives. Reward yourself. Celebrate your accomplishments – both verbally and visually, privately and publicly. Be specific using precise language. Give yourself pep talks. Frequently use positive affirmations. Don’t think you can do it? Tell yourself you can. And then do it. Watch your self-talk – and change it for the better. It’s a mindset. If you want better results create a better mindset.

When you talk about yourself or your work, do you use positive or negative words? The words we use can be very revealing about our orientations, attitudes and beliefs. Many times, when we speak about ourselves, if we speak about ourselves, we downplay our abilities and accomplishments. It’s true that no one likes a raving egomaniac. But, there’s a real difference between arrogance and confidence. Confidence is attractive and inspiring; arrogance isn’t; neither is insecurity. Don’t let your insecurities get the best of you. Be careful not to talk yourself down, cut yourself off short, or fall completely silent. Instead, learn to speak simply and directly about yourself and your work and above all share your enthusiasm. Not feeling it? Act as if you do. With just a little practice you will begin to feel it. It’s true we should all beware of overconfidence. And, critical feedback, the right kind and the right amount, is useful for improving performance too. Peak performance and growth take the right balance of positive and negative feedback. But ask yourself, “How balanced are you?” If you’re like most people, you’re not very balanced at all. Change this and you’ll tip the scales in your favor. This takes constant monitoring and recalibration but you’ll soon see substantial changes that make it not just worthwhile but invaluable.

How important is this? Consider how much money is spent every year on motivational resources like books, videos, lecture, workshops, and more. The figures are enormous. That’s how important it is to other people. Ask yourself, “What’s the price of not doing it?” That’s far greater. Don’t pay it. Just do it.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” – Dalai Lama

“By taking the time to stop and appreciate who you are and what you’ve achieved – and perhaps learned through a few mistakes, stumbles and losses – you actually can enhance everything about you. Self-acknowledgment and appreciation are what give you the insights and awareness to move forward toward higher goals and accomplishments.” – Jack Canfield

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” ― Voltaire

“The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simple. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out; the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish; the other selfish. One is universally admired; the other universally condemned.” ― Dale Carnegie

“The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.” – Charles M. Schwab

“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nature’s beauty is a gift that cultivates appreciation and gratitude.” – Louie Schwartzberg

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius

“I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.” ― Elbert Hubbard

“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” ― Mark Twain

“Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.” – William Safire

“Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better.” – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

“But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.” – Richard Dawkins

“The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.” – Igor Stravinsky

“Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn’t hurt your appreciation of the painting.” – Jodie Foster

“I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.” – David Rockefeller

“Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, lend us hope, usher in calm, stretch our sympathies, reignite our senses, and reawaken appreciation.” – Alain de Botton

“The essence of all beautiful art is gratitude.” – Friedrich Nietzche

“I’ve learned that universal acceptance and appreciation is just an unrealistic goal.” – Dan Brown

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy

“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.” – Amelia Earhart

“To be more childlike, you don’t have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously. Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.” – Wayne Dyer

“If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you’ll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.” – Bill Bryson

“Workaholics typically have a lot of achievement with very little appreciation of what they have, whether it’s cars or friendships or otherwise. That is a shallow victory. Then you have people with a lot of appreciation and no achievement, which is fine, but it doesn’t create a lot of good in the world.” – Timothy Ferriss

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” ― Paulo Coelho

“The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!” – William Hurt

“I do not equate productivity to happiness. For most people, happiness in life is a massive amount of achievement plus a massive amount of appreciation. And you need both of those things.” – Timothy Ferriss

“We should always remember that the practice of printing – of using an object to control the form of a repeated picture – has had a role in human culture from its earliest days.” – Richard Benson

“Fine art prints created by the artist, or the artist’s collaborator, are important because they best represent the artist’s vision. Images displayed on digital devices are subject to the non-uniform nature of different displays and they may appear radically different then the artist intended.” – Mac Holbert

“My ideal is to achieve the ability to produce numberless prints from each negative, prints all significantly alive, yet indistinguishably alike, and to be able to circulate them at a price not higher than that of a popular magazine, or even a daily paper. To gain that ability there has been no choice but to follow the road I have chosen.” – Alfred Stieglitz

“Regarding rumors that the digital age is soon to render photographic prints as being no longer necessary or relevant (due to increasing numbers of photographic images being viewed on electronic monitors) speculators overlook the tremendous importance and historic relevance of the physical artifact as being a uniquely necessary and applicable aspect of photographic art. The electronic image could no more replace a fine photographic print, than a synthesizer could replace a violin!” —Huntington Witherill

“When you make a print, you are making an art object. You can’t hang a scan on the wall.”- George Tice

“The print is an idea made visible. For my process, a photograph isn’t a photograph until it’s a print. I love the physical presence of a print, from beginning to end. For me it’s a tactile, sensual experience. I want it to be an object of beauty, whether the subject moves you or not.” – Tillman Crane

“A photograph doesn’t feel real until it is a tangible physical object I can hold in my hand.” – Stephen Johnson

“A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.” – Irving Penn

“Mostly, I worked so quickly, I didn’t see the details of a photograph until it was printed.” – Harold Feinstein

“I was a very, very careful printer when I used 8-by-10 film. I probably spent more time on printing than anything else. The more the prints were appreciated, the more time I spent on them.” – Ruth Bernhard

“I think that it is a sensual pleasure – image making. It’s not just the finished print which is sensual in terms of the tactile qualities of the materials that I use. I’m seduced by the light, all the time.” – Elizabeth Opalenik

“You will often see that it is the unexpected accident, in tandem with your practice, that will transform the science to art.” – Christopher James

“I like to think one of art’s greatest techniques is creative stumbling, where missteps lead to creative encounters. Digital printing is an adequate place to falter — the wet darkroom is a veritable minefield of happy stumbling opportunities.” – Dan Burkholder

“A print is the photographer’s statement about the light, the mood, the space, the spirit and being of the image, and that interpretation may change with time, with technology, and with the photographer’s own interpretation of the image. A print is the completion of a photograph; without it the image is suspended in time, without interpretation.” – Eric Meola

“For me the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It’s that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom.” – John Sexton

“To convey in the print the feeling you experienced when you exposed your film – to walk out of the darkroom and say: ‘This is it, the equivalent of what I saw and felt!’. That’s what it’s all about.” – John Sexton

“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.” – Ansel Adams

“In my mind’s eye, I visualize how a particular… sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.” – Ansel Adams

“Some of my photographs have always been a mystery to me in terms of how I arrived at them. Even with the technical ability to produce fine prints, I am hard put to know how it happens, yet unless technique and materials are seriously investigated and experienced, I see that moving statements are seldom made.” – Paul Caponigro

“All that I have achieved are these dreams locked in silver.” – Paul Caponigro

“When you make prints you deepen your relationship with your images.” – John Paul Caponigro

“It’s the last 5% in quality that separates the good prints from the great prints.” – John Paul Caponigro

“We used to have to make prints in order to view certain images, particularly black and white ones. Now you don’t. But for many of us, prints are still very much desired – I think they always will be. Physical prints do many things that no other method of presentation does. With a print you experience an image in combination with specific materials, which enhance expression. You experience a print at specific scales, which has an impact on how an image is viewed and in many cases modifies the message the image conveys. Prints offer non-powered portability; they can be retrieved and distributed at a moments notice to anyone without the need for other supporting devices or additional communication. Prints can be displayed in ways that make an image’s presence more durable, affecting and even shaping the environments they inhabit; with sustained viewing this can add additional depth to looking. Prints are collectible. While the time-honored tradition of printmaking is currently evolving rapidly (so rapidly that it would be fair to say it is experiencing a profound paradigm shift) it is very much with us today, and will be for the foreseeable future.” – John Paul Caponigro

“When you look at a photograph that is printed, you are free of distraction allowing you to really engage and experience all that it has to offer. The experience triggers an emotional response very different from simply seeing an image for a fleeting moment on a screen. The print is finished product that engages the viewer. People want to move closer and even touch a print. Viewing a print encourages the viewer to travel into the frame imagining the experience of being in that place.” – Seth Resnick

“The fine print is much more than a mere reproduction of an image. It is the culmination of the inspiration and vision of the photographer. It is the clearest, most direct and powerful form of the image and has the ability to move beyond words, ideas and concepts to touch and move the viewer in the most direct and immediate way. In its highest form, the fine print can be a transparent vehicle, boldly communicating with whispers and suggestions of worlds previously unseen and unknown. No other form of the image can convey as powerfully the subtleties, the presence and the luminosity which exists in the fine print.” – Christopher Burkett

“Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way they did it before the digital age. The photograph, as it was printed in the darkroom, became visible bit by bit. As you read your way through a novel, the same chemical process takes place.” – Patrick Modiano

“I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.” – Bill Brandt

“I set myself up in opposition to the thing that I’m going to photograph and I try and find a place to stand so that when the image is made a visual resonance is engaged between me and the subject. I can then take that image and amplify it in any number of different directions as I take it into the print making process. And then, when the print is seen by someone else, whether I’m there or not, hopefully what I’ve put into that piece will initiate another situation of resonance between the print and the viewer. That’s what’s really important to me.” – Craig Stevens

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” ― William Faulkner

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” — Andre Gide

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T. S. Eliot

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” ― Hunter S. Thompson

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.” – John A. Shedd

“I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.” – Oprah Winfrey

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg